SWIFT BFL: Fintech is no fad

Financial services technology and ‘fintech’ will be inseparable in a decade, according to the keynote speaker at the SWIFT Business Forum in London.

Eileen Burbidge, a partner at Passion Capital and the fintech envoy for the UK Treasury, said that, by 2026, any financial service provider will be a ‘fintech’ and “we won’t be talking about it as a separate thing”.

She also argued that, actually, fintech is nothing new, saying “Financial services … has always been a leader in technology.”

While service providers used to be the only innovators, they are now seeing more external influences on the market, and demand for technology is coming directly from users, rather than from within institutions.

Burbidge suggested that the industry should be working collaboratively, and that this is an achievable goal. She described an “ecosystem” where everyone is “working together to move the financial services industry forward”.

While some of the most ambitious entrepreneurs and best value propositions are in the fintech space, Burbidge pointed out that innovations around settlements or reconciliations still cannot be realised without the help of a bank. Equally, banks would not be pushed to innovate if start-ups were not around to put pressure on them.

In the conference opening address, Javier Pérez-Tasso, CEO of SWIFT for the UK and the Americas, also honed in on the advantages of collaboration, pointing out that innovative start-ups do not have the same power of distribution that the big players. He suggested that firms should find a way to combine innovative new technology with a large client base.

Pérez-Tasso also highlighted London as one of the most active hubs for fintech, saying that the fintech phenomenon is happening everywhere but is “particularly strong in the UK”.

He added, however, that it is still unclear who the eventual winners in this area will be. Comparing the competition in the industry to the upcoming London Marathon, he said that as more and more entrants join each year, it becomes harder to pick out the probable winners.